Get Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, And The Human Prospect Crafted By Paul R. Ehrlich Issued As Version

great overview of why we are the way we are! Very humbling and inspiring narrative that starts at the microevolution level of genetic mutation and scales up to macroevolution such as cultural environments can influence the development of genetic information.
Ehrlich's final thought that we need to think broadly about the plurality and variablity of our human 'natures' instead of thinking of genetic inheritance being a singularly driven human 'nature'.
One of the best books on human evolution

This ambitious work, the magnum opus of Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, and the popular author of the best selling The Population Bomband many other works, is quite a challenge for any reviewer.
Perhaps I should begin with the footnotes, There are too many of them, On page, for example, Ehrlich writes ", . . twelve populations of a gut bacterium have now been tracked, . . " footnoting the word "bacterium. " When one turns to the back of the book, one finds simply, "Escherichia coli, " Perhaps it would be better to have written "Escherichia coli" in the first place! And something needs to be done about letting us know which footnotes are extensions of the text afterthoughts, clarifications, etc.
, that we might want to go chasing after and which are merely references, Of course this is a problem with all extensive works of scholarship, I suggest two sets of notes: one for references and one for clarifications, indicated perhaps by numbers for one and alphabetic letters for the other.
There arepages of footnotes here,altogether! andpages of works referenced, The indexa particularly good one, by the waycoversdoublecolumned pages,

Footnotes aside, this is a book that in a sense summarizes a long and much laureled career written by a man whose work and accomplishments we can all admire and respect regardless of whether we agree with his sometimes all too politically correct conclusions.
Human Natures, despite Ehrlich's careful avoidable of such terminology, is about evolutionary psychology that is, about how our understanding of evolution and our place as evolved and evolving beings affects how we view ourselves and our prospects.
His "human natures" are derived from a survey of a vast literature including the work of anthropologists, ethnologists, sociologists, biologists, sociobiologists, psychologists, evolutionary psychologists, ecologists, demographers, geneticists, behavioral geneticists, historians, etc.
, etc. This splintering and proliferation of disciplines as we enter the third millennium of the current era makes one long for consilience! Most of these disciplines and many others have as their unifying principle the process of evolution.
Ehrlich writes in the Preface p, xi "I want to show how a greater familiarity with evolution might contribute to our resolving, . . the human predicament. " Ehrlich is referring to cultural evolution as well as biological, His primary thesis, that we are not of one "human nature" but of various "human natures," is implicit throughout.
Made explicit on page, is his belief that since the beginning of agriculture,years ago we human beings have been, and continue to be, more subject to the forces of cultural evolution than we are to biological evolution.
He writes, "cultural evolution at this stage of our development begins to swamp the more gradual processes of biological evolution, " It's clear that he wants to emphasize cultural evolution because we can do something about it, whereas to change our biological nature would involve human genetic engineering, a process that Ehrlich is understandably loathe to endorse see especially page.


Ehrlich argues strongly for the plasticity of human behavior, He doesn't like generalizations about innate behavior, This can be seen particularly in his analysis of the causes of war in the Chapter, He insists with some exasperation that "It is senseless from any viewpoint for people to keep acting as if it were either possible or pertinent to determine whether human beings are innately aggressive or innately pacific" p.
. Ehrlich wants to encourage the idea that education can lead to more desirable behaviors, If our behavior is innate, then perhaps we can't be blamed for it, and furthermore and worse we can't do anything about it in terms of education, etc.
It is this fatalism that Ehrlich is preaching against,

In short, Ehrlich takes what might be considered a caring, "liberal," politically correct view of human nature as opposed to some others who see us merely acting out our genetically and culturally derived destinies.
His position is comforting, but strange to say I really see little or no difference between his PC version of "human natures" and, e.
g. , Edward O. Wilson's much maligned amoral view, I think a lot of the differences are really matters of terminology and emphasis,

I want to add a couple of clarifications, Apparently Ehrlich is unaware of the full significance of "the handicap principle"advanced by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi in their book of the same namewhich in part explains altruism beyond kinship and reciprocity, namely that altruism is sometimes an advertisement to potential mates of one's fitness.
Also in the chapter entitled "Why Men Rule" Ehrlich points to men being bigger as one of the reasons they rule, and to their being freer because they have less of a reproductive burden as another.
But as Bobbi Low has pointed out in her Why Sex Mattersmen rule because there is no reproductive advantage to be gained by women in taking the reigns of power.
Whereas men have been able to gain greater sexual access to females by becoming rulers and thereby increase their reproductive fitness Bill Clinton, notwithstanding, women gain little to nothing in securing access to more males.


Also there is the matter of the synchronization of menstrual cycles by women living together discussed on page.
Ehrlich says the evolutionary significance is unknown, Actually it's fairly clear: in a harem situation if the females become fertile all at the same time, this provides an opportunity to more broadly mix the gene pool because the harem master can't possibly do it all himself, and so other males may get an opportunity.
This embarrassment of riches for the harem master reminds me of the walnut tree producing so many seeds in a boon year that the squirrels can't possible eat them all.


This is a great book engagingly written by a man at the pinnacle of his career, a man I admire and respect.


Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
a tedious read at times, but also full of some interesting insights and ideas.
This book is brimming with information on evolution cultural and biological that your lay scientist cannot afford to miss out on.
My only complaint is that, if you've read up on these topics to any significant degree prior to this book, you won't find much new here.
In summary, this is great for beginners not so much for intermediates or higher, For Ehrlich, there is no

biological human nature, Rather, human nature is formed by culture and it is pluralized to reflect our great diversity, Ehrlich gives a nod to our biological being food, sex, and some geneticbased diseases, He grants the power of the genotype but then states that it is transformed, most meaningfully, by culture, Appropriately, he reacts negatively to extreme biological determinism but he goes to the opposite extreme by dismissing any fundamental role for biology to explain human behavior.
In this regard, he mentions in one of his footnotes his alignment with Sartre: We are free of biology to make our own choices we create our own meaning.


Ehrlich conflates biological need with the cultural content that satisfies this need, Biologicalgiven needs are more than food and sex, They are in the main the need for nurture, for protection and security, for group life, for independence, and for some degree of “selffulfillment.
” There are also “antineeds,” the threats and harms that we resist, These needs are invariant and make us, substantially, who we are, In many ways, they also make us kindred spirits with life itself, Ehrlich makes the observation that we dont go very long each and every day without thinking about food and sex.
That observation can be extended to the other needs as well, Below the surface of what we do and how we do what we do, we can trace these to some fairly basic, unchanging needs.
Why, after all, do we work Why do we choose the line of work we do Its these sorts of questions that lead to the deeper, underlying issue of motivation and this explains a lot.


Of course we are free to make our Sartrelike choices, informed by experience and reason, but the question is why we make the choices we do.
Daily decisions describe who we are only in part, Underneath this are the deeper motivational components that predispose us to act in the world in certain ways, Ehrlich talks about the role of culture in forming us, Thats clear enough, but why does culture have that power Why do we seek to be a member of the group Why do we so willingly conform to the group Why does the group insist on conformity to its mores, and why does it react so strongly to apostasy Darwins insight here is pertinent biology has molded us this way because being a member of the group is essential for our survival.


This is not a nitpicky point, The problem with Ehrlichs perspective is that hes all about the mind and “reason” controlling the unruly body, In fact, for him, our mind and all of its content diversity IS human nature, But how does the mind perform that regulatory function if it is not aware of the underlying dispositions that push us in certain directions to satisfy our need for nurture, for security, for sex, for selffulfillment, for value within our group, and that have us resist the world with fear and anger.
We cannot regulate ourselves by reason if we are not aware of what activates us, We simplistically think we know why we do what we do, but any good therapist can show just how shallow our selfunderstanding is.


Regarding our biological nature and who we are collectively and individually, just as Darwin opens up “Origins” with his discussion of breeding “cultivated plants and animals”, if we can breed other life for certain characteristics, temperament or disposition, why hasnt nature done the same for humans Or, are we an exception to nature Could it be that beyond a specieslevel human nature, we have biologicallybased, variable variability is, after all, what natural selection works on human natures, starting with the poles of selfish behavior on the one hand and otheroriented, behavior on the other, with most of us lying somewhere in between, because both poles work as survival strategies

As Ehrlichs culturallycreated human natures are multiple and diverse, so are, he believes, human values.
Despite all of his various humanitarian impulses, Ehrlich is a relativist, Thats a problem because he says, again in one of his footnotes, that Hitlers values cannot be condemned, objectively.
Hitler and Ehrlich take your pick, “Thou shall not kill,” Ehrlich states, is “culturally evolved, ” Really Ehrlich then makes the statement, gratuitously, that in their quest for universal values, “philosophers and sociobiologists alike are restricted to using their valueladen and emotional minds as tools for searching and analysis.
” Ehrlich repeats the mantra that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is, ” Yes, logically, thats correct. But you can turn this into a hypothetical statement and do just fine, If we are free to kill what does that do for social order and, then, what does that do for our own welfare There is a logic to the science of biology that is fully valueladen and its only the Ehrlichtypes who “forbid” us to go there.
In fact, take a page out of Sartres work and make a choice: Value life, value our freedom in ways compatible with the freedom of others the golden rule and put some common sense back into theory.


For those new to this subject area, Ehrlichs book is comprehensive, He covers all of the arguments from A to Z in aplus page book, which he characterizes as his attempt to cover this subject matter “concisely” and with “brevity.
” He doesnt move without a footnote, For those who have read more extensively in this area, it is a repetitive treatment of whats been said by many before, prompting the question as to why Ehrlich needs to write this book.
Well, for one thing, Ehrlich is pushing a point of view, He argues that hes merely presenting the consensus view of the scientific community and that he supplements this with his “interpretation” where there is a dispute.
A “consensus” view is misleading, Wilson, Dawkins and the evolutionary psychologists, to start with, are large voices in this longstanding debate regarding the role of biology in human behavior and they have substantially different perspectives.
Ehrlichs book, as wellwritten as it is, is mostly an interpretation, Its an interpretation as old as Plato that we are free to cast our biology aside and be whoever we want to be.
Ehrlich has one vision and Hitler had another, For Ehrlich, scientifically, it doesnt really matter,
.